Squeezed out?

ON MAY 13th some 49m Italians will be entitled to elect 315 senators and 630 deputies to parliament. Members of both the lower house and the Senate are elected by a combination of first-past-the-post for three-quarters of the seats and proportional representation for the remaining quarter. But to have any of those seats distributed under PR, a party must secure at least 4% of the national vote. All the parties, including tiddlers, that have signed up to join one of the two main blocks, on left or right, can be confident of getting at least some seats by PR. The old-guard Refounded Communists, standing alone, should comfortably cross the threshold. But the small parties that must fight hardest are the trio that have refused to join the big alliances.